User blog:MisaoFan/Why Laos is a puppet government of Vietnam
Here's why: The level of peace is only enforced by the Vietnamese government for the sake of silencing the opponents in which its own country itself is also peaceful. Additionally they both do not tolerate dissent. Vietnamese military troops, official advisors and a secret police are installed in Laos just for that. Even its embassies are controlled by the Vietnamese government. Laos today is not a totally independent country, only a Vietnamese annexation like People's Republic of Kampuchea. Also the politicians acted as if they are hypnotized by them. The Lao-Vietnamese Friendship Treaty of 1977 is just an excuse for Vietnam to secretly and hypothetically transform Laos into provinces of their own. Democracy Is nonexistant. Not only are many Lao people today poor but their rights have been deprived of proper liberty too. Ethnic minorities, especially Hmong, are largely persecuted by the Vietnamese-controlled, ethnic lowland Lao-dominated government. They participated in ethnic cleansing against Hmong to no end while encouraging other indigeneous people to get out of their villages and integrate themselves into Lao society as a pretext for alleviating poverty and social modernization despite the fact that Laos itself has the largest amount of ethnic minorities in SEA. Even its economy is very likely to be secretly controlled by Vietnamese. It may have one of the fastest growing economies of Southeast Asia but it's still jumbled with budgetary crisis and corruption that fails to pay salaries to the state employees on time. It still relies on foreign aids and tax collection does not achieve its goals. Meanwhile, foreign governments are still supporting the Lao communist government instead of criticizing its policies and gross human right record. Even Thailand is rooting for them despite being closely aligned with Laos in terms of language, culture and history. The Vietnamese government is also responsible for making hundreds of courageous and heroic Laotians calling for democratic reforms disappear. Among one of them is Sombath Somphone; he may not be a guy calling for political reforms but he's a civil society worker who encourage Laos to slowly alleviate from poverty in a legitimate way, it's such a shame he is abducted by Vietnamese-backed Lao agents who is misunderstanding his true intentions to the country. This is why Laos is overall one of the least popular and ignored countries of East Asia, coupled with the fact it is impoverished. No one cared over the fact it is the most bombarded nation of Earth nor about the secret war nor about the ethnic cleansing of Hmong for closely alignating with USA, let alone having the current communist regime that's actually a puppet of Vietnam. It's pretty depressing but true, as it is essentially more of a region than an independent country. Communism has no place in a country that used to be a six-years old monarchy rich in linguistical, cultural and political history with heavy Buddhist history with close ties to Thailand. It may have its dark moments in the colonial history, but the Kingdom of Laos (1953-1975) is a constitutional monarchy that held real power in regard to proper independence and maintain democracy. Sadly it went downhill from here, as the reason Laotian Civil War happened as a proxy war during the Vietnam War is in fact greenlighted by the Pathet Lao agents that are closely aligned with the Communist Party of Vietnam. It really tried to maintain its neutrality because of the 1954 Treaty but disastrously failed, as the Viet Minh invented all sorts of armed mechanism to assault the Lao kingdom's political powers and become the scene of a so-called Secret War between the US forces and North Vietnamese army. Ever since the 1975 takeover, Laos lost its independence at the hands of Vietnamese occupation. There's very little chance democracy could be brought through revolution easily. Instead, democracy could only return there through hard-lined coup or worse, war in the same fashion as the 2003 American invasion of Iraq. Once done, the newly-revived Kingdom of Laos should fearlessly condemn the machiavellian actions of the communist Vietnamese government because they are responsible for exploitating Laos with their bad intentions of completely annexing and potentially even transform their provinces into their own. End of rant here, but people who were familiar with Laos should know what I'm talking about. Category:Blog posts